All good things must come to an end, or so they say, and so the Xbox 360’s brief stint as the top selling console of the month has come to an end. After riding the marketing tsunami that was Halo 3, the Xbox 360 gave the lead back to Nintendo during October.

The Nintendo Wii and DS reclaimed the top two positions, with the home console selling 519,000 units and the dual-screen handheld moving 458,000.

While a far cry from its 527,000 unit September, the Xbox 360 continued its strong performance by selling 366,000 consoles.

Sony’s three in-market systems made up the bottom half of the list, with the PlayStation Portable leading with 286,000 – no doubt helped by the release of the slimmer, lighter hardware. The PlayStation 2 refuses to go away, selling 184,000 throughout the month.

The PlayStation 3 underperformed to Sony’s expectations once again, with only 121,000 sold. Mind you, those sales came just before the introduction of the $399 40GB PS3, which according to Sony has helped sales of its newest console triple.

While the Xbox 360 may have given up its crown in October, Halo 3 retained the top spot on the software chart with 433,800 copies sold. In terms of cross-platform releases, however, Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock lives up to Activision’s sales expectations selling more than a combined total of 1.17 million units across the Xbox 360, Wii and PS2 – taking up the next three spots behind Halo 3.